Saturday, September 13, 2008

Splash & Dash Results

My first open water competition is done and I'm very happy!

The morning started off with lots of stress. Seeing the buoys at 1000meters looked a whole lot farther then I've ever swam before so I was scared and really fighting self doubt. Quitting, or giving up during the swim was just not a option for me...I was going to face this head on and just get it done.

So here we go. Going into this event my plan was to stay in the back of the pack and not rush. The worst thing that can happen in an open water event is to panic so I worked on keeping a pace I was familiar with. Heading toward the first buoy I had a little bit of anxiety. I was already tired and had a long haul ahead of me. Pull yourself together is what I said to myself and I stopped to catch my breath and asses where I was in the group.

After a couple of stops to catch my breath I came out of the water just 2 minutes behind my goal and that's okay. I felt really great and was ready to use those newly acquired run techniques Dave has been teaching me. I felt like I finished the run really fast and as it turns out, I was running nearly a 7-8 min mile! I remember the day when I couldn't run a mile at all, let alone do it in 7-8 minutes. My overall time was 51 minutes. I need to work on my transition time and maybe I could have gotten this event done in 45 minutes....

Congrats to my friend Vickie who also did today's event and did great! I didn't feel so alone anymore once you arrived sister...